


Loose My Name Any Day

by OceanPlanet



Series: you know i have ears on stalks [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 08:27:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19128292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanPlanet/pseuds/OceanPlanet
Summary: His hands come up empty. Time is ticking, fingers frantic, and his head has no space for forbidden, absurd, ungrateful, regretful thoughts thathis hands always come up empty.This is an apocalypse AU for someone important.





	Loose My Name Any Day

His hands come up empty. Time is ticking, fingers frantic, and his head has no space for forbidden, absurd, ungrateful, regretful thoughts that _his hands always come up empty._

Even if causality is seemingly singular, there are always so many chances involved in a catastrophe: an inconceivable event on top of an inconceivable coincidence on top of a poorly made choice, soaking with hopes trying to uproot themselves from the hardened soil, dry and black like plague.

There are three pockets in the folds on the white uniform clothes that have been given to him. A pocket on the front of the white shirt with short sleeves almost up to his elbows: he never uses those. He searches it anyway. Two pockets on pants: one on each side, each sealed with a zip like a promise. He feels around the smooth plastic of his phone, he grabs his identification card, his useless identification card, and his fingers close around a small glass something.

It's a simple glass container with a metal cap. Empty. He doesn't pull it out.

Unrecognition is a heavy kind of panic.

The officer, the soldier, whatever, the person in a different uniform is looking at him, waiting. It looks like concern, but don't be fooled, find the stupid permit, _hurry_. It should take a few seconds; that's how much a person gets.

“Is there a problem?” Another officer, staff, comes into the cabin, this one older, facial hair making him intimidating despite the younger one being taller, bigger with muscles all around his shoulders. They are both looking at him in their matching grey uniforms. The other five passengers in his cabin are looking at him.

He swallows and keeps his stupid empty hands in the pockets. Half his mind must believe that keeping them close will keep his fear and his stupid regret contained. It doesn't work, it doesn't work.

“Can I call my mo– my parents?” he asks. He can't consider it surrender yet even though he is out of chances and out of time.

“He can't find his health permit,” the younger one tells the older one.

The look he gets is sharp as a surgery knife and he feels the seams tearing like clouds. 

It's utterly ridiculous: he has no reason to cry, yet he feels his throat like a blood pressure cuff.

“My parents must have – it must be in the suitcase,” he says and feels it fall apart in the space between his mouth and the officer's ears. “Can I call my mom?”

“Give me your ID,” the older officer says, impatience seeping like dust, as if there isn't enough of it all around.

He takes it out and hands it over.

“You're twenty years old and you have your mother pack your suitcases? ”

He doesn't have a reply for that. _So what. How is that important. Just let me make that call, people are waiting, the whole train is waiting, this is taking way too long. She insisted because she doesn't know when we'll see each other again._

“Make it quick,” the younger one says, but not unkindly. Lance keeps seeing the concern of his eyes imprinted onto his frontal lobe as he fumbles with his phone, types in his mother's number rather than searching it in the contacts and presses dial.

His whole body is vibrating and the first two rings go by like wind and the officer's eyes are grey, like his uniform, like the train, like the overcast morning sky. It might rain later on. There might be a storm. Rain and storm and thunder, but they'll all be far away by then, and his mother is not picking up on the fourth ring.

His mother picks up synchronous with his legs turning into — he might collapse. "Is everything alright, honey?”

Blood pressure cuff, he thinks. “Mom,” more grey uniforms are appearing at the door, behind the two officers with identical stances and contrasting kindness, patience, whatever, “Mom, I can't find my permit.”

The older one turns to another uniform and says something, but Lance has only two ears and both of them are filtering everything but his mom's voice. He caught the importance of the words; he has to catch the words, they are too important not to. “It should be in your pocket, honey,” she says, and he would imagine the worry even if he couldn't hear it.

They're coming in, the tight space feeling overcrowded from the start, now four new grey uniforms closing in, replacing air. He looks at the officer with grey eyes in front of him.

“It's not, mom, I looked. Is it in the suitcase?”

They are talking, he hears the word _notified_ and the words _nobody has_ and nothing else.

“Are you sure?”

His other hand is in his pocket again, switching between each side, but there's not much to go through, “It's not, mom, I'm sure.”

“You need it on you, I didn't put it in the suitcase.”

A tap on his shoulder. “Hey,” says the young officer, he must be only a few years older than him, “Can I help you search the pockets?”

It's ridiculous. What choice does he have but accept?

He nods and he officer steps closer, close, up into his personal space and a hand goes into his pocket and his heart goes into his windpipe and he almost chokes on it.

“Could it be in the suitcase, mom?"

“No, no, unless you put it there. You need it on you, Lance."

It's hot in the cabin already and the warmth of another person standing so close is making the phone slippery in his hand. The officer steps to the other side and reaches into the other pocket. He's taller than him, covering him like a shadow.

Fuck, shit, fuck. “What do I do, mom?”

“What is that?” The officer is holding the glass container. Empty, empty, not his. 

The room is getting louder and somebody moves and he is shoved slightly to the left.

“Are you absolutely sure it's not in your pocket? The one with the zip?”

“What's in this?” says the older officer, louder.

It's not in the pocket, he’s looked, he hasn't seen the glass before.

“I don't know,” he says; he knows how flimsy it is. Falling through his fingers like water.

“Then look again, mijo.”

The passengers are really loud now – are they leaving the cabin? The people in the grey uniforms are ushering them out. What is happening, he hasn't seen the container before —

“Can you find it?” asks his mom.

“No, it's—” There is a hand on his forearm and the phone is gone. 

The young officer hands the phone to another person, a man, the grip on his arm not loosening.

“You need to explain right now what this container is,” the officer says, barely louder than the other officers, barely louder than his heart, voices mixing together _exposure_ and _sealed container_ and _send for the_ and _pathogen_ and _clear_ —

This is a situation from a film: he has nothing to do with it, why is it gripping him inside and out—

“I swear I haven't seen it before,” he says, but that's what he would say if he had, too, “I don't know, it's not mi— maybe my mom gave it to me? I don't know—”

“Lance Mcclain,” says the man holding his identification card.

Nobody ended the call, but the cabin is too loud for him to hear if his mom is calling for him; he hadn't even let her know he arrived at the station, what is she thinking about now? Nobody is minding the phone.

The grey-eyed man is still holding him, a strong grip, a grip from a film. He moves and Lance gasps when he recognizes handcuffs, too slow to react, looks down as in slow motion when one side is clasped around his wrist and the hand releases his arm to reach for his other hand. He doesn't resist when it's pulled behind his back towards the other. The click the handcuff makes is a sound from a film.

He can't see the phone, or the container, and it's panic and everything else interwoven so closely he can't tell them apart, the tightness, too real tightness in his everything and his vision is blurry.

“Lance,” the officer says, slow and controlled – he thinks he finds concern but has to be careful not to be fooled— “My name is Shiro.” He has to turn his head to look at him, at the grey eyes, and they seem urgent. “We need to go to the examination center. If everything goes smoothly you can catch the train tomorrow.”

 _What about my suitcase_ , he thinks and knows it's a useless thought. He opens his mouth—

“Don't say anything,” Shiro says. Too much is going on, voices flying over his head as they start moving towards the corridor, when people from all cabins will stare when they pass. But the container is not his, and he can't stay quiet—

“It'll be sorted at the station. It's better to speak in a controlled environment in a situation like this,” Shiro says, voice tight and clipped, close behind his head, and they move, like a procession; he can't think about his mom, or the permit, or the innocent looking glass he hasn't seen before in his life. He's seen films: he knows what it looks like.

He knows what it feels like, now, too, despite his thoughts being ripped before they are completed: it feels like a storm. A summer storm with the wind pushing him around until he has no control at all. He is twenty years old and his mother packed his suitcase for him and in a moment he has nothing but dust. He hates being infantilized: nobody here knows what he's done to be here. Nothing but dust.

“Don't be scared,” Shiro says at his back. It's an abstract wish, but he'll take it. In the moment, it's all he has.


End file.
